In a digital system with serial transmission of data, a received signal may be related to a system clock of a transmitter (a “clocked signal”). The frequency of the received signal is the same as the clock frequency. In a real environment, however, the timing relation between the received signal and the system clock will vary slightly. Deviations in frequency of several hundreds of ppm will normally be observed. On the side of the receiver, these deviations, referred to as “jitter”, must be detected and compensated by sampling the received data with a clock that is adjusted in phase in an attempt to center the sampling point with respect to the eye in the eye-diagram of the input signal. The required phase adjustments to center the sampling point within the eye occur stepwise as a result of conditions determined by a voting unit. Due to the jitter in the received signal, however, the voting process may be misled, and phase adjustments occur that are later recognized as inadequate. In such cases, corrective phase adjustments are made to move the sampling phase back to an earlier condition. As a result, the sampling phase is moved back and forth, and the recovered signal also has jitter on it. This kind of jitter is called “hunting jitter”.